An Amanzimtoti school has advanced to the Kleuterzone Nationale Kampioenskappe (Kindergarten Zone National Nursery School Championship).
The competition is based on a television programme on DSTV’s Kyknet channel.
Participating schools perform their annual concert, which is filmed and aired on TV. Of the 42 items entered in the competition, 20 were selected for the final.
Woelwater Pre-Primary School is the only Afrikaans departmental primary school in Toti and it was the only KZN school entered.
“I read about the competition and contacted the organisers in December to see if we could enter,” said Woelwater Pre-Primary principal, Celia van der Merwe.
Once they received the go-ahead, they had to move their annual concert from November to March, with only a few months to prepare and get even the new grade R pupils ready for the big stage.
The host of the competition, Afrikaans singer Anthonie Bougas visited the school in March and the concert was filmed and interviews conducted with the children.
Unhappy with the production of the DVD, however, it all had to be repeated in September.
“In October I received an email from the organisers to say they were really impressed with our performance and we stood a good chance in the national championships.”
The prelims were aired on three Afrikaans TV channels from 13 October and the public voted for 24 items to advance to the nationals.
Of the six items entered by Woelwater, three made it into the finals, an impressive feat by the Toti school in their first attempt.
The problem the school had to solve, though, was how to transport 65 people to the finals on Saturday, 19 November.
“As the children are aged three to six-years-old, each one has to be accompanied by an adult,” said Celia.
“We stand a good chance to win, so we needed to make it to the finals but I knew not all the parents could not afford the cost of two aeroplane tickets.”
The solution was to gauge how many parents could afford to go and only take a group of 20 children to perform all three items. This put even more strain on Celia and the school, as those 20 children had to knuckle down to learn all three items.
The audience of about 700 people and the guest judges will decide on the winners on Saturday and the show will be aired in January.
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